Nor vainly bids those whom she charmed before;
Oh! let not then this humble verse offend,

Her skill can judge the speaking of a friend;
Not zeal presumptuous prompts the cautious strain,
But Christian zeal, that would to all extend
The cloudless ray and steady calm that reign,
Where evangelic truths their empire due maintain.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

Gleamings of poetry,- if I may give

That name of beauty, passion, and of grace,
To the wild thoughts that in a star-lit hour,

In a pale twilight, or a rosebud morn,

Glance o'er my spirit,-thoughts that are like light,
Or love, or hope, in their effects.

Ir spread beneath the summer sky,

A green turf, as just meet

For lilies and blue violets,
And moonlight fairies' feet.

And in the midst a rose tree grew,
Covered with buds and flowers,
A crimson cloud of breath and bloom,
Like that of evening hours.

I watched the beauty of that rose,

Its June-touched bloom, its love-sweet breath, When suddenly, I marked how dark

Its shadow fell beneath,

Clings darkness to-I sadly thought—
The fair in form, the fresh in hue?
Alas! there's not that thing on earth
So bright, but has its shadow too!

Literary Gazette.

THE WALL-FLOWER.

THE wall-flower-the wall-flower!
How beautiful it blooms!
It gleams above the ruined tower,
Like sunlight over tombs ;
It sheds a halo of repose

Around the wrecks of time;-
To beauty give the flaunting rose,
The wall-flower is sublime.

Flower of the solitary place!
Grey Ruin's golden crown!
That lendest melancholy grace
To haunts of old renown;
Thou mantlest o'er the battlement,
By strife or storm decayed;
And fillest up each envious rent
Time's canker-tooth hath made.

Thy roots outspread the ramparts o'er,
Where, in war's stormy day,
The Douglases stood forth of yore,
In battle's grim array:

The clangour of the field has filed;

The beacon on the hill

No more through midnight blazes red,— But thou art blooming still.

Whither hath fled the choral band
That filled the abbey's nave?

Yon dark sepulchral yew-trees stand

In the belfry's crevices, the dove

Her young brood nurseth well,

Whilst thou, lone flower! dost shed above A sweet decaying smell.

In the season of the tulip cup,

When blossoms clothe the trees,
How sweet to throw the lattice up,
And scent thee on the breeze.
The butterfly is then abroad,
The bee is on the wing,

And on the hawthorn by the road
The linnets sit and sing.

Sweet wall-flower-sweet wall-flower!

Thou conjurest up to me
Full many a soft and sunny hour
Of boyhood's thoughtless glee;
When joy from out the daisies grew,
In woodland pastures green,

And summer skies were far more blue
Than since they e'er have been.

Now autumn's pensive voice is heard
Amid the yellow bowers,

The robin is the regal bird,

And thou the Queen of Flowers!
He sings on the laburnum trees,
Amid the twilight dim,

And Araby ne'er gave the breeze
Such scents as thou to him.

Rich is the pink, the lily gay,

The rose is summer's guest;
Bland are thy charms when these decay—
Of flowers, first, last, and best!
There may be gaudier on the bower,

And statelier on the tree;

But, wall-flower, loved wall-flower!

Thou art the flower for me!

Literary Souvenir.

THE RED FISHERMAN.

BY W. M. PRAED, ESQ.

Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

Romeo and Juliet.

THE abbot arose, and closed his book,
And donned his sandal shoon,
And wandered forth, alone, to look
Upon the summer moon:

A starlight sky was o'er his head,
A quiet breeze around;

And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed,
And the waves a soothing sound:
It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
But love and calm delight;

Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
On his wrinkled brow that night.
He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds;

He clasped his gilded rosary,

But he did not tell the beads:

If he looked to the heaven, 't was not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;

If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.

A pious priest might the abbot seem,

He had swayed the crozier well;

But what was the theme of the abbot's dream,
The abbot were loth to tell.

Companionless, for a mile or more,

He traced the windings of the shore.

Oh, beauteous is that river still,
As it winds by many a sloping hill,
And many a dim o'er-arching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,

And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honey-suckle sweetly shades,

And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers!
But the abbot was thinking of scenery,
About as much, in sooth,

As a lover thinks of constancy,

Or an advocate of truth.

He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;

He did not mark how the mossy path
Grew damp beneath his tread;
And nearer he came, and still more near,
To a pool, in whose recess

The water had slept for many a year,
Unchanged, and motionless;
From the river stream it spread away,
The space of half a rood;
The surface had the hue of clay,

And the scent of human blood;
The trees and the herbs that round it grew,
Were venemous and foul;

And the birds that through the bushes flew,
Were the vulture and the owl;

The water was as dark and rank

As ever a Company pumped;

And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank, Grew rotten while it jumped :

And bold was he who thither came,

At midnight, man or boy;

For the place was cursed with an evil name,
And that name was “The Devil's Decoy!”

The abbot was weary as abbot could be,

And he sate down to rest on the stump of a tree:

When suddenly rose a dismal tone,—

Was it a song, or was it a moan?

"Oh, ho! Oh, ho!

Above,-below!—

Lightly and brightly they glide and go: